OUTWORLD: Dark Planet

OUTWORLD: Dark Planet Part 10

Rodolfo edged out to the alley entrance and peeked out into the street. The noise in the distance was definitely coming closer, Doreen thought as she peered out behind him. The street was deserted save for a few service workers, but they were picking up on the sounds of trouble and making an escape. "I don't think we're going back the way we came," Rodolfo said unnecessarily.

Doreen sniffed. "Maybe we should keep moving."

Rodolfo nodded. "I like the way you think, Miss Mundie." He slipped past her and motioned for her to follow him.

Doreen stayed on Rodolfo's tail as best she could; her head hurt, and flashes of light behind her eyes weren't helping her, either. "We need to find a terminal, find Oleander Street, and get to the security place," Rodolfo said between puffs.

Doreen didn't enquire about the others. She reassured herself that they had the good sense to do the same. She also hoped that a few SSSS guards were deployed in this area.

Her hopes went unfulfilled in the next street, but there was a public terminal, and Rodolfo was aggressively interfacing with it as soon as it caught his attention. He sighed and pounded a fist on its casing. "The security office is nine blocks from here!" he barked.

Doreen whined. "Back the way we came, right?"

"Right," Rodolfo growled.

A sudden commotion grew at the far end of the street, and a small cadre of what looked to Doreen like mercenaries trouped up from behind a warehouse unit, with a veritable salad of weapons ranging from light pistols to overbuilt rigs resembling portable missile launchers.

"They look like the pricks who ambushed us outside Jenny's," Rodolfo breathed.

"More of them, then?" Doreen asked.

The rhetorical query was partly drowned out by more noise coming from behind the two. Doreen and Rodolfo turned to see another party approaching from the opposite end of the street. These were dressed in the grey uniforms of the Sedalia Security guards, and they were packing some fairly hefty equipment as well.

"Think we're caught in a war," Doreen said bleakly.

"Well, we're not getting caught in it here," Rodolfo snarled, grabbing Doreen and pulling her further on. Doreen groaned as her head rocked again. A few stray shots from small arms flicked their way as they fled, hitting inanimate surfaces all around them.

Rodolfo poured on speed and aimed for the nearest doorway, which a confused and quite terrified Raccoon civilian currently occupied. She yelped and dived aside to avoid being hit by a speeding Mutt and his Jackal charge.

"I hope you're not the ones they're after," the Cat proprietor of Patsy's Cakes growled as she recovered and slammed the security shutters home to protect her shop. "Last thing I need is the Security guards shooting up my place."

Doreen and Rodolfo had taken refuge in the far corner of the shop, beside a shelf stocked with sweets. Several other civilians were also present, looking frightened and incredulous. Doreen could tell that, despite Sedalia's relative desolation, attacks were a rare thing.

"What if it's a terror attack?" one wailed. She was a beige-furred Antelope, her beautiful curving horns decorated with gold rings. "What if there's a bomb on the station?"

"No bomb could blow up the station," another civilian, this one a Labrador in a helmetless radiation suit, muttered. He snorted at the closed shutters. "It's probably some nut-job with a potato gun ranting about how the sky is falling on him again."

Rodolfo turned in his direction. "If that's the case, then there are a lot of them."

"Really?" the radiation suit guy queried.